Can I game on my laptop

Table of Contents

Last Updated: November 23, 2021

Whether youre a PC gaming veteran or a complete newbie, one of the most important questions youll find yourself asking is: Can my computer run this game? There are a ton of ways to answer this question, but also countless variables that can muddy up your real-world results, thanks to the endless intricacies of PC build variations and game optimization.

If you want to know how to tell if your computer can run a game you want to play, keep reading. Well walk you through everything you need to know in this article, and by the end, youll always be able to figure out whether or not a game will work on your system.

You can also check out our new system requirements section which covers minimum and recommended system requirements as well as our own recommended PC specs for popular PC games such as League of Legends, Fortnite, Overwatch, and Destiny 2.

Before You Start

Know Your Exact Specs

First up, you need to figure out what your specs are; you cant know what games your PC can run otherwise. While some tools auto-detect these things for you, the most thorough and accurate methods require you to know your detailed system specs. Tools like Speccy can do this for you, but may not be as accurate for prebuilt PCs and certain GPUs.

In my case, Speccy works fine dont judge me for running in single-channel, one of my sticks went out but if you cant get a detailed reading of your Processor, RAM, and Graphics Card from it, you may need to do a little extra research.

As long as youre using an AMD or Nvidia graphics chip, for instance, your driver software [GeForce Experience or Radeon Software] will be able to identify what graphics chip is inside your system. If youre using Intel integrated graphics, just Google the name of your Intel CPU and you should be able to pull it up.

If youre using a prebuilt desktop or laptop PC, youll want to find the exact model number so you can pull up detailed specs if any of the above solutions fail.

Once youve identified your exact system specs, either write them down or keep them in a Notepad file; after all, if you need to reference them in the future you wont want to repeat all of this over again. Now, move on to our next step.

Have UserBenchmark On Standby

UserBenchmark will be an indispensable tool for comparing your own systems power to recommended and minimum specs on a games page. Just as an example, lets look at the Steam page for Devil May Cry 4 [and its minimum/recommended specs] to see if I can run this game.

All of the components listed here are a decade old, so you may have difficulty comparing your current system specs to these to find an expected level of performance. Youll often find that system requirements pages will list GPUs and CPUs that are a few generations behind [note DMC4 recommends Windows Vista for optimal performance], even when the game has just been released.

As for things like memory, this refers to how much RAM you have and is relatively straightforward. And to make sure you have enough space on your hard drive just open the File Explorer and click This PC. Youll see your hard drives here.

Using UserBenchmarks GPU comparison tool, I can compare my relatively-modern GTX 760 to the GeForce 8600GT listed on this page to find roughly what level of performance I can expect.

The moment of truth. Can my computer run it?

Looks like I can definitely play Devil May Cry 4.

Can I Run It: Our Guide

Manual Method: Check The Product Page

This method is touched upon above, but essentially youll want to find a games recommended specifications. If the game is on Steam, all youll need to do is search it and then bring up the product page. From there, you should be able to scroll down and find your results pretty easily under the System Requirements section.

If the game isnt on Steam, youll need to do a little bit more work instead, try Googling something like game titles system requirements. For instance, a Google search of Overwatch system requirements brings me to this page from Blizzard!

If you want to save yourself a little bit of work, you can also try

Tool Method: SystemRequirementsLab

SystemRequirementsLab is a tool that you can use to automatically determine if your PC can run a game or not. Its a little bit more in-depth than using product pages especially those that arent as specific as they should be but wont be as accurate as finding benchmarks or accounting for special scenarios where you can run a game despite not meeting its requirements; its kind of a stickler like that. [More on that later!]

After you run the tool once, it saves your system information as a cookie in your browser. As long as you dont clear your browser data, you can keep coming back to SystemRequirementsLab and checking your compatibility with different games!

Best Method: Find Benchmarks That Match Your Setup!

The best method isnt using any tool or product page, though.

The best method is finding benchmarks or videos of people running the game with your specs. If you own a GTX 760 like me, for instance, you can search for, say, GTX 760 PUBG and get a video like the one weve embedded below, showing a player running PUBG with that graphics card.

You can check out our own Youtube channel which we have just launched, we have some fantastic benchmarking videos for various PC builds we have recently been testing, including the latest Ryzen 3000 CPUs and the Radeon 5700 XT GPU which we tested in more than 15 games.

Check out our Youtube channel right here.

The above video is one of our most recent videos which shows us playing a whole host of the latest and greatest AAA games including PUBG, Fortnite, Dota 2 and many more. Were testing the latest AMD Ryzen 3700X with the Radeon 5700XT GPU and 16GB DDR4 RAM.

You see, product pages arent always accurate. Sometimes they over-estimate system requirements, or sometimes [usually in the case of older titles that are still getting continuous updates, like Team Fortress 2] they underestimate them.

The only way youre going to know for sure how well your system runs a game is if you run the game yourself. This is relatively easy with Free-to-Play titles, but if a games not F2P, then the next best way is to find an up-to-date video of someone with similar specs running that game in action, such as us!

Below Minimum Requirements?

Lets say youre below minimum requirements on the product page, or SystemRequirementsLab says so. The first thing youll want to do is some strategic Googling to see if thats really the case.

However, what if you cant find a matching benchmark or you still arent happy with the performance youre seeing?

Well, you may still have other options. This is PC gaming, and the best part about playing on this platform is that the options are pretty much endless.

In the case of Valve games, like Team Fortress 2 and CS:GO, there are countless performance config files out there that you can use to push higher framerates.

There also other tools you can use to squeeze just a little bit more out of your system, like Windows 10 Game Mode or Razer Game Booster.

Finally, if its only a single component and its not a massive performance difference, it usually wont be a problem. Generally, the biggest concern will be the GPU, then the CPU, and possibly the amount of RAM youre using.

Utilizing UserBenchmark, you can get a good idea for how large the gap between what youre running and the recommended components are. However, if youre still new to the scene, you should consider asking for advice before buying a game you might not be capable of running.

At the end of the day, though, there are going to be scenarios where you simply cant run a game with a satisfying level of performance. More recently, some modern titles may outright refuse to run if you have less than 6GB of RAM in your system, though these are typically few and far between.

If you cant run a game and you spent real money on it, we recommend getting a refund. Steam, UPlay, GOG, and Origin all offer full refunds in this scenario! Most brick-and-mortar retailers will offer this, too, but youll need to keep your receipt if youre returning the game.

Demos and Trials

You can also run a demo of the game, but these have unfortunately become quite rare in modern PC gaming. [Steam also offers free trials of games, so if youre interested but unsure, then just test.]

If a game youre interested in does offer a demo, though, be smart and try it out before you buy it! Even with refunds in play, it can often take days to get your money back on a game that doesnt work with your system.

Conclusion

And thats just about everything!

We hope that this article helped you learn how to tell if your computer can run a game. If you have any other questions or concerns, comment below and let us know! Well do our best to help you.

If youre interested in our PC builds, we also provide expected levels of performance in the most popular PC games in each of our build guides, with numbers for games like League of Legends, PUBG, Fortnite, Destiny 2, Overwatchand more!